You can find links to all the previous editions at the bottom of this post. You are encouraged to participate using the comment link/form at the bottom of the post. If you have photos or stories to tell, do email me at [email protected]

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This Week’s Photos:

This week’s photos come from the website of Netherlands based Bluewater Energy Services B.V.:

Since its foundation in 1978, Bluewater has built a technological lead specialising in design, development, lease and operation of tanker-based production and storage systems, and has become a leading provider of innovative Single Point Mooring systems.

EagleSpeak has “Somali Pirates hijack Jordanian ship“. The ship was carrying food aid of sugar. Since when is sugar food? Why wasn’t this ship carrying grain? What was the sugar intended for?

SOUTHTOWNStar has the latest attempt to honor WWII Merchant Marine veterans through the ‘Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act’ which is lost somewhere in Congress. Opposed to passing the measure is the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who ‘view the bill as preferential treatment to civilians who never served in the armed forces’. That is also why the Veterans of Foreign Wars excludes Merchant Mariners from their ranks. Congress has certainly not shown any preferential treatment to them in the past. Take when Congress finally got around to authorizing all WWII Merchant Marine Veterans service medals. Instead of issuing real medals, they issued pieces of cardboard with pictures of the medals on them, citing ‘budget constraints’. (And yet earmarks never suffer due to budget constraints. If anything, earmarks cause budget constraints!)

Finally, we can tell the story some of us have been sitting on for months now: the whale meat embezzlement we uncovered in Japan, in which stolen cuts of prime whale bacon are smuggled away from the “scientific research” vessels and sold for oodles of yen — one of our informers heard a crew member claim he built a house on his illegal proceeds.

Whale bacon? Nobody said anything about whale bacon before. Sounds tasty. No wonder the Japanese are so insistent in wanting to continue whaling. Video here. Allegations include lying about the number and type of whales that have been caught.

The Japanese are not the first to conduct what is appearing to be unrestricted whaling. This 1995 story posted at BNET Business Network has another crime against the planet in “The KGB’s sea of slaughter – former Soviet Union’s whaling industry“. It wasn’t until after the Soviet Union fell that the international community learned that ‘the four Soviet whaling flotillas killed at least 100,000 whales over and above their quotas’.

The BBC has an update on the attempt to get aid into Myanmar in “Eyewitness: Ship barred from Burma“. The ship is the USS ESSEX currently on station off the coast. The story includes a video report from the ship.

Bob Couttie’s Maritime Accident Casebook has bad news in “US Coastguard wants more harassment powers“. Funny how they want foreign seafarers to carry identification that the US is refusing to sign itself up to. (That would be the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Seafarers’ Identification Documents Convention (Revised), 2003 (ILO 185))

Kennebec Captaincovers a story from 1856 that could have been titled ‘If it were not for the actions of the cook, the ship would have been lost’. In this case, the cook was the only one left onboard.

Last month, the U.S. Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) conducted a thorough assessment of the ship, and recommended that the Coast Guard delay acceptance until eight serious, “starred” deficiencies were addressed. When the Coast Guard took preliminary acceptance of the ship yesterday, it did so without having resolved those starred deficiencies – seven of the eight deficiencies remain incomplete. The letter also outlined concern that INSURV was unable to conduct a complete assessment of the BERTHOLF’s advanced computer and communications systems.

Never Sea Land also has a photo of a car that is also supposed to be a boat. It looks like a commercially-available car, which according to the post is not an impressive boat. At least it floats….

The destroyermen has a photo of half of the ship’s bridge while underway. On a merchant ship you’ll normally find one or two people up there. Not so on a Navy ship. Then again, there is a reason for the additional staff.

Molten Eagle has some history on Germany’s submarine Merchant vessels.

Steeljaw Scribe has “India’s MMRCA Competition: The Plot Thickens” in that the Indian Navy is looking at an American-made jet to use with their Russian carrier. Funny if the jets are ready before the carrier. Maybe they are concerned that any delivery schedule of Russians jets follows the same sort of delays as the carrier schedule.

TheTelegraph has the story behind a documentary on modern day pirates. The documentary is called ‘Porampo: Pirates of the Malacca Straits’ and you can view the trailer here. The story also mentions a likely follow-up reality TV series: ‘Pirate Hunters.’

MARAD – National Maritime Day events – On May 22, the United States celebratesNational Maritime Day. In Washington, DC, a Eucharistic liturgy will be celebrated at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church; a seminar will be conducted at the Rayburn House Office Building on environmental issues; and an observance ceremony will be conducted at the Roosevelt Memorial. (5/11/08). – Dennis Bryant Holland & Knight homepage(Used with Permission)

A line manager for IRISL said that the first sailing will depart Bandar Abbas on 16 May, calling at Havana (Cuba) and Puerto Cabello, the Venezuelan port for the capital Caracas, via Malta and Barcelona. It did not identify the ships that will be deployed in the new trade lane.

The UN Security Council in March imposed sanctions on IRISL, ruling that “states should inspect cargo to and from Iran of aircraft and vessels owned or operated by Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line if they believe they are transporting goods prohibited by UN resolutions.” – Fairplay Homepage(Used with Permission)

AND:

NEWLY-TRAINED US officers who try to escape sea duty can face dire penalties. One graduate had to write a $120,000 cheque to repay his government-sponsored education at the famous Kings Point academy, while a second was sent to Iraq. These two examples were highlighted at the Council of American Master Mariners conference. The meeting also heard that the 700 or so officers who graduate annually from the US Merchant Marine Academy and the six state academies were too few to meet the growing need for blue-water and brown-water officers. The US Maritime Administrator, Sean T. Connaughton, has halted the system of waivers for graduates to go directly to shore jobs – except for those willing to work in shipyards. “I want them to get their hands dirty,” he told senior captains. – Fairplay Homepage(Used with Permission)

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Submissions for future editions:

Please submit articles for inclusion in next week’s edition using the following submit form at Blog Carnival. You are also welcome to email stories and photos to [email protected] for inclusion in future editions as well as suggest areas of coverage.

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Previous Editions: As linked below or click on the tag ‘Maritime Monday’ for all gCaptain editions.